Pim Fortuyn wurde ermordet, Theo van Gogh von einem Islamisten abgeschlachtet, Ayaan Hirsi Ali hat das Land verlassen, Geert Wilders wird jetzt wegen “Anstachelung zu Hass” angeklagt. Holland mausert sich.

Bruce Bawer: Submission in the Netherlands
The appalling decision to try Wilders, the Freedom Party’s head and the Dutch Parliament’s only internationally famous member, for “incitement to hatred and discrimination” against Islam is indeed an assault on free speech. But no one who has followed events in the Netherlands over the last decade can have been terribly surprised by it. Far from coming out of the blue, this is the predictable next step in a long, shameful process of accommodating Islam—and of increasingly aggressive attempts to silence Islam’s critics—on the part of the Dutch establishment. http://www.city-journal.org/2009/eon0122bb.html

A Political Decision
Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, the director of a controversial film on radical Islam, says the decision by the Amsterdam Court of Appeals on Wednesday to prosecute him for allegedly inciting hatred against Muslims was strictly political. “It puts hundreds of thousands of Dutchmen on trial for opposing Islam’s violent messages,” the MP told Haaretz on Thursday. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1058197.html

Death to Free Speech in the Netherlands
This ruling comes a mere six months after the public prosecutor’s office found Wilders’ dialogue contributed to the debate on Islam and that he had not committed any criminal offense. Now, curiously, the court has done an about-face and decreed that charges may be brought against the politician, and that prosecuting him is somehow in “the public interest.” http://www.meforum.org/article/2053

The War on Wilders
Wilders is being prosecuted for stating the obvious. It is telling that in deploring his comparison of Islamic extremism to Nazism, the court pointedly omits to mention that Wilders has produced ample evidence for the charge. In Fitna, his March 2008 film about Islamic radicalism, Wilders included images of Muslim demonstrators wielding placards declaring “God bless Hitler,” calling for “another Holocaust” and paying tribute to Adolf Hitler. In another scene from the film, a 3-year-old girl is seen reciting Koranic verses calling Jews “apes and swine.” When Wilders likens the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf – yet another criminal offense, according to the Dutch court – it is this observable context that he has in mind. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=757EF675-E73E-43D3-9698-20F42BCAD623

So the inevitable has now come about
Ever since Fitna appeared, Wilders has had to live under police protection. But far from defending him and western civilisation from the totalitarian threat to life and liberty arising from the attempt to suppress discussion of radical Islamism and the religion upon which it draws, the Dutch have now decided to suppress it themselves. http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3277841/a-defining-moment.thtml

Silencing Islam’s Critics
This is exactly what Dutch prosecutors said in June when they rejected the complaints against Mr. Wilders. “That comments are hurtful and offensive for a large number of Muslims does not mean that they are punishable,” the prosecutors said in a statement. “Freedom of expression fulfills an essential role in public debate in a democratic society. That means that offensive comments can be made in a political debate.” The court yesterday overruled this decision, arguing that the lawmaker should be prosecuted for “inciting hatred and discrimination” and also “for insulting Muslim worshippers because of comparisons between Islam and Nazism.” This is no small victory for Islamic regimes seeking to export their censorship laws to wherever Muslims reside. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123258473846504459.html

Good Jews
The newly-released anti-Islam film by right-wing Dutch legislator Geert Wilders drew condemnations from the Netherlands’ Central Jewish Board, which Friday called the film’s focus on anti-Jewish preachings by Muslims “counterproductive” and “generalizing.”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/969825.html
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/970768.html